Riley table refurb project

[jelly]

I recently acquired a Riley table off ebay and am just starting a total refurb. I will post my progress in this thread for anyone who is interested, and I would appreciate advice as I go from people who have done this before. Thanks already to Sav who gave me quite a lot of advice regarding tables on ebay.

Here is the table, I set it up as it was so I could play on it until I got round to refurbishing it.



Things I have noticed so far before starting:
- Timer seems to be working fine, but the bar doesn't seem to be completely dropping. I hear a noise when it sounds like the bar is trying to drop in the machine, but it seems to get stuck. Hopefully this is just a bit stiff and will be easy to fix.
- There is a big hole in the cloth where the coin slot used to be, someone has very skilfully covered the table without filling in the coin slot with something, so the cloth has just caught and ripped on the jagged edge of the slate. I intend to fill this in with plaster or something as I don't intend to use the coin slot.
- The scoring numbers are original I think on the sides of the top, but the 100 and 200 holes are both marked as 100. Is this some strange old variation?
- The scoreboard is a Jelkes (not pictured) with Jelkes numbers, and also the scoring numbers on the ball tray are of the Jelkes style. They are not in the best condition so I think I might remove all the numbers and make some custom ones as I don't have a complete set of any type.
- Sometimes the ball gets stuck in the left 50 hole between top and base. Hopefully this will be fixable by relining the ball channels.
- I've tried hard to get it level, but there seems to be a slight roll in from the far left corner to the center. Hopefully this doesn't mean there is a crack in the slate (which I beleieve to be fine), but maybe the slate is just slightly warped with age.

So I started stripping this down today, Here is an album of all the photos I have taken so far, and I will post specific photos in the thread if I have a specific question.

Bar billiard table refurb photos

with the top off I inspected the timer. Fortunately this all looks t be working really well, the bar is just stiff around the pivots so is not properly dropping every time. I think this is going to be easy to fix later.

I started dismantling the top, managed to remove the surround and cushions and then proceeded to try and remove the pocket rings. I read in another thread something along the lines of a "sharp tap with a hammer" should free the rings from the plaster, but I didn't like the sound of any sharp taps with hammers near my slate! So I gently chipped and scraped out all the plaster from 1 ring until I could get the ring out.

It took a long time and I was keen to inspect the slate so I stripped the cloth, cutting round the holes for now. I will remove the other rings later!

Fortunately the slate bed looks to be totally intact, at the baulk end it seems to be in two parts, where a strip at the end with the coin slot seems to be a separate smaller slate. I don't know if this is original or not but it's out of the playing area anyway so doesn't really matter. You can see from one of the photos that the coin slot has been repositioned once in the past and then covered up at a later stage.

I then took one of the cushions off the frame, this turned out to be pinned on with a few panel pins, and seems to be just a strip of wood with small rectangular rubber cut into it, here is a photo:



Does this look like some sort of standard rubber? I will need to replace all these so does anyone know which type I would need?

My second question is regarding cloth. I need to work out which cloth I am going to get. I was chatting to Sav about his Hainsworth Match sets but they are cut to suit other types of tables with th leatherette area and I will need cloth to cover the full slate bed. Does anyone know the best place to source a custom cut of a decent cloth? I was considering having it in a non standard colour which would rule out Hainsworth match, but are the other cloths available (e.g. the Strachan West of England ones) really that much worse (considering I'm a fairly new player and don't play to the same standards as some of you lot!).

Any advice on these would be much appreciated, and I'll post updates with my progress.

Thanks,
Joe

May 31, 2015 16:59:04 GMT jelly said:

Fortunately the slate bed looks to be totally intact, at the baulk end it seems to be in two parts, where a strip at the end with the coin slot seems to be a separate smaller slate................
My second question is regarding cloth. I need to work out which cloth I am going to get. I was chatting to Sav about his Hainsworth Match sets but they are cut to suit other types of tables with th leatherette area and I will need cloth to cover the full slate bed.
Thanks,
Joe

Silly question maybe - but why cover the entire table with cloth? Wouldn't it be better to source some leatherette, especially as you have observed that the slate is in two sections ?

[jelly]

Well the smaller section seems to be very small compared to other tables, so I think it would leave the playing area far too big. But I would like to hear from any other Riley owners whether they have done what you suggest. See photo 3940 in the album for the join between the 2 sections

[Chris_Sav]

I 'd be interested to know the dimensions of the smaller slate. Almost looks like someone has 'Rileyised' a Jelks slate (and I thought they were only ever 'Samsised'!)

I've only done a couple of these tables and feel I cannot speak with complete authority but will advise where I can.

Ring removal, chop out the plaster is laborious but safe. I use a roundel of wood which is exactly the same size as the ring and rest it on the ring. Tapping around the edges releases the rings without problem normally and without damage to the rings, removing the exposed plaster is then simple.

Cloth is normally full length on these as it needs to be tensioned in all four directions, the problem is stabilising the leading edge nearest the 'D' if  leatherette is used (must be non stretch and have some here).

The only league we know of which plays on Riley tables is Guernsey, and from memory all have the leatherette section.

What concerns me about playing on a fully-clothed surface is the damage over a period of time by the bridging hand: granted, many players hold the edge of the table when cueing, but on a table perpetually in use hand marks appear on the cloth purely from spotting the object ball........so if you put hand up to cue ball as well, double lot of hand marks on cloth !

Any Rileys I've seen with the full cloth have also had a baulk line marked and a huge semi-circle marked out instead of a D. But here again, perpetual placing of a cue ball straight to cloth without a D will eventually wear a hole in that point. So having a leather(y) D is essential in my view. You don't have to conform to the set standards: Guernsey play all shots "off the spot" and use a small leather circle about an inch in diameter.

[jelly]

The smaller section is 81.5cm x 18.8cm. The larger section is 78.5cm x 182.5cm and packed with 1cm strips of wood down the side to bring it out to the full width of the frame.

I was planning on covering entirely in cloth and then ironing on a D in the right place and drawing baulk line. I'm not worried about wear because it's pretty much entirely me using it and i hold onto the edge of the table anyway. This is how it was when I bought it and it works fine for me like that.

The rubber is rectangular section 1/4 x 3/8 so should be ok to source. Any supplier recommendations?

Also, any opinion of Hainsworth Smart cloth? I have noticed this is available in a wide range of colours so might go for that if I can find someone to cut me a custom size.

[Chris_Sav]

Masters Trad Games stock the rubber.

Re cloth, Strachan (West of England) 777 or better 8411 Tournament Gold was the cloth of  choice for years. I moved to Hainsworth Match because I found it slightly faster, but more important it has a very short dense knap that requires less maintenance and is less prone to pilling.

The front piece on the slate is certainly an odd size, being smaller than the leatherette area. The slate is too wide to be a narrow sams slate padded out which was my first thought as they are longer than Jelks. We can only guess I am afraid!

[jelly]

Ok so I have been looking for a cloth supplier, nobody will make me a custom cut so my options are, masters games bar billiards cut, in the 777 cloth, which I don't think is going to be big enough (awaiting clarification) or buying a 7x4 pool table set of hainsworth match or hainsworth smart from www.e-service.co.UK and chopping the side cushions from the main bed. The question is, how much surplus material do you need to allow on each side to aid in fitting, because the pool table cloth set option is going to be pretty tight in that regard.

Thanks
Joe

[jelly]

Today's update. Removed all the cushion rubbers and staples from the rails and the main bed. The cushion rubbers are completely perished as expected!

Turns out the entire ball tray and channels are held in with a single screw and just lift out



Found this sticker under the slate, gives some clue as to it's history. So it was reclothed in blue in 2000 by Bar Billiards Ltd. There are traces of a previous normal green cloth on there, also the baulk area has some residue on the slate as though maybe it used to have leatherette stuck on, don't really know how that would work but anyway. The guy I bought it off said he got it at auction about 7 or 8 years ago, so this would link up with Bar billiards Ltd selling off all their tables I believe? Anyone any idea when this table was made?



Removing the timer shows traces of a previous older timer, which correlates to a blocked up horizontal coin slot in the slate.



All the body parts of the table have the code C1171 carved into them, not sure if this is a serial number or something else.

So my current plan regarding cloth, I have found out that the main bed section of a hainsworth 7'x4' pool table set is 108cm wide, this would give me just enough to cut 2 sections off for the side cushions (9cm each required) with 2cm surplus width on the main cloth (which requires 88cm). Is this enough? Please somebody tell me if I'm making a big mistake in assuming this will be enough.

Also, I'm still undecided between Hainsworth Match and Hainsworth Smart, on the one hand I really like some of the non standard colours available in the Smart but I am aware that Match is tried and tested and recommended by people here. Has anyone got any opinion on whether the Smart cloth is suitable or not? I saw that Sav recommended against the Precision, but I'm not sure if anyone has tried Smart?

Thanks,
Joe

[jelly]

Pocket rings finally all out in one piece.



On cleaning up the pocket rings I noticed that the insides have been previously coated in some sort of clear coating. It's pretty much worn away on all pockets except the 200 hole, pictured left below. Any idea what this is and whether I should recoat the insides of the rings with anything?



Decided to put my desires for an interesting colour aside and ordered Hainsworth Match, went for an 8ft bed without cushions which will be plenty to cut what I need from and hopefully have enough scraps to reline the runners too.

[jelly]

Spent the morning sticking new rubber on the cushion rails:

   


Now I have an interesting conundrum. The rails must have been previously attached with some sort of witchcraft. They were simply panel pinned on to the frame, however this has somehow been done from the inside of the cloth, i.e. the cloth is stapled on the back of the rails as you would expect, but then I can't understand how these were then pinned on to the frame without damaging the cloth. The only way I can see of doing this is to put the pins in place through the rail, then cloth the cushions, then tap the pins back through, i.e. so the head would be pushing into the cloth from the inside in the process, and gently tap them in through the cloth. Can this be right? Any bright ideas on another method?

[jelly]

Dismantled table gradually sanding down all parts ready for refinishing. I will be using Danish oil which I use on pretty much all the wood in my house as it brings out the natural colour of the wood so nicely.

Runners are stripped out and ready for relining, I will be using green sticky backed baize material recommended by someone in a previous thread.

Dismantled timer and cleaned out gunk from most parts. Will experiment with some different driving springs as the ones I have seen overly high tension and its very hard to pull the lever.

Cloth arriving in the next day or two so I can get onto the fun bit!

[jelly]

Relined runners

[jelly]

New cloth fitted

[Chris_Sav]

Looks good! hope you pulled it good and tight!

[jelly]

Yes I pulled it as tight as humanly possible, as I had a larger piece of cloth which I would be cutting the cushions from also I had a nice amount of material to gather up and gain some purchase. I would not have gone that tight if I hadn't read your posts, scared of tearing the cloth. Cutting through with a stanley knife was a bit butt clenching when the cloth looks like its going to tear itself apart but fortunately no dramas.

Did a rough roll test on the cloth compared to the old cloth and the balls travel almost twice as far on the new. It really was horrendously slow before so I am looking forward to the improvement.

Managed to get the bar mechanism working smoothly, the brackets had been bent causing them to push into the bar causing sticking. That and minor timer adjustment and I have a perfect 17 minutes until bar drop with 45 secs left on the timer.

Finally worked out a way to reattach the cushions. Turns out the top frame comes apart into two pieces in a way that I can attach the cloth to one side of the rail, panel pin the rail to the frame and then there is an overlap allowing me to pull the cloth taut and put the other side of staples after that before reassembling the frame. It's all a bit of a faff but I can't see any other way, this method was confounded initially by a previous owner having 'evostuck' the two pieces of frame together, instead of just relying on the 18 massive screws. I don't know if they had an alternative method but I can't imagine what. One cushion done successfully, the rest to do tomorrow.

All that is left after that is sand and oil the four legs and assemble!

[jelly]

Cushions recovered

[jelly]

The finished article. Playing beautifully and the roll in the slate I noticed at the start seemed to have vanished. 

The observant of you will notice that that's a jelkes scoreboard, came with the table. I have not put the numbers back on the scoring tray as I might try and make a Riley style scoreboard myself and create some matching numbers using brass etching.

Thanks to all for the very useful posts throughout this section which have helped me a lot!

Now I just have to get good at the game :D

Yes, very nice neat, clean job......looks "good as new" !

As you say, the Jelkes backboard doesn't really look right with it and you could probably flog that on eBay. If it is hinged, the hinges are very much sought after.

Great idea to make your own Riley scoreboard and there are some good designs to copy from on this page:
www.mercuryleisure.co.uk/barbilliards#bbscorer

[jelly]

Thanks Clive.

Alas, the hinges were not present. The brackets for the original scoreboard were in place so I have just screwed a couple of brackets to the back of the jelkes one so it slots in.

I would like to make one like this: www.hubblesports.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/bar-billiard-table-5new.jpg

I have some of the original score markers which are the same as the ones in the above picture, so I could use those as a template. Anyway, this is probably a future project. It is not something that is going to bother me for the time being, just enjoying playing on my shiny new table!